The Revolutionary Alterations Department (RAD)

Yesterday (Feb 1) I learned the Kennedy Center was canceling all its Black History Month events, and that upset me enough to commit to a substack a day highlighting an incredible person this month.

Today (Feb 2) I read the Kennedy Center is closing for two years…but I made myself a promise so here we go, I’ve got a midnight deadline.

David Walker. I would love to tell you about him.

Born around 1796 in North Carolina to a free mother and enslaved father, David grew up understanding America’s most twisted math problem. His early life unfolded within the brutal realities of a slave society, where you could be technically free (he was because his mother was) and practically imprisoned, where liberty was both birthright and complete fiction. It’s like being told you’ve won the lottery but the prize is a lifetime supply of anxiety.

Fast forward, it’s 1829, David’s up in Boston, where we have a harbor, as you may recall. We once dumped a ton of tea? Anyway, David runs a clothing shop. Seems like a normal business, you’re a sailor, you need a decent coat, you walk into the shop (or shoppe?), try on a jacket, check the fit, haggle over price.

What you perhaps don’t realize is that David has just turned you into an unwitting revolutionary courier because he did something spectacularly dangerous. He wrote An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, exposing the hypocrisies of American claims of freedom and Christianity, and demanding abolition happen NOW (not our now, his now, to be clear).

David was super proud of his pamphlet calling for immediate abolition and possible armed resistance and thought, “You know what this needs? A stealth delivery system involving maritime workers and careful needlework.”

He enlisted sympathetic sailors, both Black and White, to carry The Appeal to Southern ports, and also was sewing copies into the lining of jackets to be unwittingly carried south. Every coat became a Trojan horse. This man turned the phrase “fashion statement” into something approaching literal warfare.

Can you imagine the patience this required? David sitting there with needle and thread, carefully concealing revolutionary pamphlets between layers of fabric, knowing that if anyone discovered his side hustle, he was basically dead. This is artisanal rebellion at its finest. Handcrafted, small batch revolution with attention to detail that made plantation owners absolutely apoplectic.

The delivery network was pure genius. Maritime workers are already traveling, they already need clothes, and they already have reason to be in multiple cities.

I keep imagining those moments of discovery. Some sailor in Charleston unpacking his bag, finding David’s pamphlet hidden in his coat lining, and suddenly experiencing extraordinary cognitive whiplash must have been extraordinary: “I thought I was buying underwear, but apparently I signed up to the Underground Railroad?”

The reaction from Southern authorities was exactly as hysterical as you’d expect. They banned the pamphlet, banned Black sailors from disembarking in Boston, and put a $10,000 to anyone who could bring David before them alive or $1,000 for his head.

David died in August 1830 from “tuberculosis” officially.  Many people suspected poison. One year between publication and death? Okay.

What moves me most about David’s story is how perfectly he understood the mechanics of change. This was strategic, patient, absurdly risky work that required him to trust completely in the basic decency and courage of people he’d never meet.

We live in an age of viral content, where ideas spread at digital speed to millions. But there’s something profoundly moving about David’s analog approach, that the most subversive act might be trusting ordinary people to carry extraordinary ideas, one careful stitch at a time.

You could say he

(•_•). ( •_•)>⌐□-□. (⌐□_□)

altered history.

Fun emoji is in lieu of a sketch because #tired but look up David Walker, please. And tell two other people about him.

xo,

Saana

PS - This was an important rush job, save your edits, BTR.